It became a joke between me and Rasha—and a game of chicken, too, because once the first volley was returned, who dared to break the rhythm? Out herself as the woman with a smaller sense of humor?
First, I sent her a Christmas card. Not the snowman-and-reindeer type, either. You know, the kind that’s supposed to be non-secular, even though it literally says Christmas on it? No, I sent her the most hyper-religious card I could find. I’m talking the OG Holy Mother Mary holding her one and only whitewashed baby Jesus against a choir of angels. The inside read like a sermon.
Naturally, when Rasha got my no-context, If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’… then you will be saved. Romans 10:9 Christmas card on the second day of Hanukkah, she served me up with some weird-ass, faux-Pagan Winter Solstice card she must’ve had to order online to the payment of three children’s teeth and a raven feather.
Ever since, we’ve been sending each other the wrong cards.
For my last birthday, Rasha sent a Congrats on Your New Home card. When she moved into a new apartment, I sent her a Sorry for the Loss of Your Pet card. The list goes on and on: a Nephew Birthday card to congratulate me on securing my first real (unpaid in a shithole local dive) stand-up gig, Administrative Professional Day and St. Patrick’s Day cards for Passover, and a Thanks for Hosting card to cheer Rasha up while she had the flu. Our friendship became predicated on absurdity. The pressure to one-up the last card—to never disappoint—built a new trapeze of competitive love between us. The spotlight burned me; I was supposed to be the comedienne, after all. But Rasha couldn’t hide her history of dweeb-faced double acts with me in old middle school talent shows. Vet tech or not, she had every bit the wit and timing I had, or sometimes even more.
Anyway, so this went on for years. God, we must have wasted so much money on this joke. But you know what? Every penny was worth it. Even when we had to scrape by just for $.99 cards. We plumbed the depths of tactfully inappropriate sentiment, and we discovered that it was virtually bottomless.
Then Rasha’s father had an aneurysm.
No one saw it coming. I guess you don’t, with things like that. Rasha didn’t understand what was happening—she’d come over for dinner, her mom was in the bathroom—and she thought he’d had a heart attack. She tried CPR. It didn’t work. By the time she was sane enough to call me and sob the whole story, she was already dressed for the funeral. I couldn’t even make it in time.
I went to Hallmark, feeling numb.
I stood in front of the sympathy section for a long, long time, wondering what would hurt my friend more: keeping up the joke, or letting it die with her father. I read through the Loss of Dad cards, and they weighed my heart ever-heavier, until I thought I couldn’t breathe.
They had Valentine’s Day up. I wandered down that aisle for a break, comforted by the love and hope in its sea of badly-paired reds and pinks, and I reflected on the profundity of a comedian’s pause. When they just told a joke, everyone laughed, everyone finished laughing, and the comedian still hasn’t started the next one yet. When you can almost see the fear in the far darks of their eyes—hear that tiredness on their one deep breath. So the last joke went over well. What if this next one doesn’t? Will they still love me if I can’t make them laugh?
I sent Rasha a blank Valentine’s Day card. Pink background, one big red heart surrounded by an aura of gold glitter. It didn’t say a word. I didn’t write a word, either. Just sent it to her as I bought it, full of pause and what-do-you-even-say?
Two weeks later, I got a card back.
On the front, under a pair of fuzzy pink booties, it said, Congrats on your new granddaughter! On the inside, in Rasha’s loopy cursive, it said simply, Thank you.
Hayli McClain’s work has appeared in places such as Flash Fiction Magazine, White Wall Review, and Luna Station Quarterly. She is earning her MLitt in Creative Writing from Stirling University in Scotland, after working retail in a card store for two (mostly pandemic) years. Her sense of humor is still recovering. Find Hayli at @haylimcclain.
Photo by Visual Stories || Micheile on Unsplash.
